Assembly family table with relations

Forum|Forum|8 hours ago
August 24, 2026
4 replies
36 views

Hello everyone,
I’m facing a problem yet again: I have modelled a door system in Creo Parametric, consisting of a door frame and a door leaf. The dimensions for the frame and the door leaf are specified in the assembly’s relationships. To make the assembly easier to use, I now wanted to define it as a family table, so that I have individual assemblies for specific assembly scenarios and can work with them. However, the individual parts do not change when I alter the instance’s parameters.
The background is as follows: I would like to be able to insert any adjustments to the relationship logic just once, rather than having to insert them multiple times, as would be the case with copied components.

So the situation is that I currently have one System.asm consisting of a frame.prt and leaf.prt. I now want multiple instances for the system.asm for various mounting situations of additional parts without copying the system.asm.

Do you understand my problem and could you perhaps help me out? Maybe there’s a better solution using published geometry or something like that?

General

tbraxton

22-Sapphire II

I would suggest that you use a notebook (*.lay) to define the variants needed. The notebook will define global variables and relations, and these can be declared/undeclared to any model as required. You can update each variant by changing the parameters in the notebook and then declaring it to the relevant models and have them update using the definitions in the notebook.

About Notebooks

D

DavidBigelow

18-Opal

I would approach this with Pro/PROGRAM and a COMPONENT Placement with a Variable that uses the model name for the placement. That would get you different options on the assembly in a specific location.

You could use the same approach for other locations that are resumed/suppressed or just move the original placement location parameter/dimension relationships. Depends on how flexible you want to get.

STRONGLY recommend you use CSYS references for any of this, they are the most stable and will keep you out of trouble - enabling you to focus on the legos you are moving/placing.

tbraxton

22-Sapphire II

Notebooks support automatic placement of components in an assembly. You should consider all options to manage your design intent including Pro/Program. Without a complete understanding of what your requirements are it is hard to prioritize which option would be “best”. In general, I would also use assembly by csys to locate components in when adding components to an assembly (skeleton model?).

https://support.ptc.com/help/creo/creo_pma/r11.0/usascii/index.html#page/assembly/asm/About_Automatic_Assembly_Using_Notebooks.html#

If I understand that your requirement is to just assemble the same components in various positions relative to each other to define a “state” then you can drive a skeleton model from a notebook that will position the components as desired automatically. It is not necessary to do this through a skeleton model but that would be my first choice in this case.

Note that you can undeclare a notebook which can be useful in stripping out information (intellectual property) that you do not want to share when sending out native files. Pro/Program information is saved with the models and would be visible to anyone with access to a model.

D

DavidBigelow

18-Opal

Yea - I agree - but Notebooks are “baggage” when you want to use designs in other assemblies/configurations. If you are good with a one-off-configuration… Notebooks can be attractive… but you will have to declare/undeclare them all the time when you want to reuse parts/assemblies in other designs.

Concur on the Skeleton Model - that is the right way with CSYSs and some logic for sure.

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